Frankly, I'm fully fed-up with the incessant stream of baloney I'm exposed to about Web 2.0 and social media. Here's this week's nominee for grand marshal of the double-talk parade. From ADWEEK...

"...in today's post-advertising world...the Web becomes the preferred destination for brand exploration....Start by becoming skillful at story listening so you get to understand your story as it lives in the hearts and minds of your consumers..."

Give me a fucking break.

"Post-advertising world?" Advertising is everywhere. On every shirt, taxi, wall, dry cleaning bag, and license plate. You can't take a piss without hitting advertising. Post advertising world my ass.

"Preferred destination for brand exploration?" On what planet, I'd like to know, are people seeking a "destination for brand exploration?"

As for "story listening," please excuse me while I go kill myself.

Do these people know how to do anything other than cut and paste each others pompous bullshit?

Look. I know social media can be effective. I know there are some terrific success stories. I know it works nicely in some categories. What drives me nuts is the dreadful language, the inflated promises, the overstated claims, and the constant stream of self-congratulatory nonsense.

It's just one more medium. A new world hasn't begun or ended because of it. In order to be useful, the web doesn't have to vanquish everything else. Would everyone please just calm the hell down and use your heads.

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans.""As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."